real estate

Real estate startup Zumper, which offers tools that connect brokers and property managers with potential renters, has today released a new mobile application that allows users to fill out their rental applications – including pulling their Experian credit report – right from their iPhone. The company, which says it’s now seeing over a million monthly visits from web and… Read More

In the future we will all wear amazing silver underpants and look at our incoming bus and subway transfers on a screen from TransitScreen. Created by a lone entrepreneur with a dream and some LCDs, TransitScreen is a sort of timetable for mass transit. However, these things can sit in multiple places including in the lobby of your favorite building where they display train times, information… Read More

As we approach AW-Day, the naysayers are coming out to put their hand in front of the bottle of champagne that will be used to christen the S.S. Apple Watch. The most prominent of those naysayers was Mark Wilson, a traditionally even-keeled fellow who, in his own way, is pushing the pro- and anti-Apple Watch argument forward. I won’t even debase his post with the term clickbait: he has a… Read More

Zillow now makes it easier for homeowners to edit facts about their homes and have those changes immediately reflected in its price estimates.
Zillow’s so-called Zestimates are one of the key features of its service. For every house in the U.S., Zillow will try to estimate its current value. Currently, that’s about 100 million homes, the company’s chief economist Stan… Read More

Open Listings is a startup fresh out of the current Y Combinator batch that’s easing the home buying process by letting people move forward without real estate agents.
Because two-thirds of the overall residential market involves repeat buyers, some people may not want to rely on agents because they’re already familiar with what to do. So instead, Open Listings will refund the… Read More

High speed fiber optic internet is coming to downtown Detroit thanks to Dan Gilbert’s Rock Ventures. The investment group recently confirmed that construction is underway on a fiber-optic network starting in the downtown area.
The network, dubbed Rocket Fiber, will serve residents and businesses and will offer internet connection 100 times faster than current services, Crain’s… Read More

Things are starting to simmer in real estate technology. The first phase of technology development in the category, which was primarily focused around listing services for the residential side of the market, has paved the way for industry leaders to broadly reconsider how technology can make their lives better. Read More

HomeLight, a startup to help those trying to buy or sell their homes find the right real estate agent, has raised $3 million in new funding.
The startup, which launched in November 2012, analyzes home sales data to determine an agent’s strengths and weaknesses. It then uses that information to deliver recommendations when you search based on things like city, neighborhood, property type… Read More

CommonFloor, which claims to be India’s largest online real estate platform, has raised an undisclosed amount of new funding from Google Capital. What’s notable about the funding is that it marks Google Capital’s third investment in Asia since the firm, which focuses on startups in the mid-to-late stages of growth, launched in February. Read More

When consumers are home shopping these days, they tend to be drawn to consumer-friendly portals like Zillow, Trulia, Redfin and others, which offer simple, user-friendly tools to take on what’s otherwise a complex and confusing process. But these services can also sideline real estate agents, who are often still stuck using dated technology while their customers are being lured away… Read More

Despite having a population of just 5.4 million, Singapore is one of the top 10 real estate markets in the world. New startup 99.co wants to grab a slice of the pie with a site that it says makes listings more transparent and navigable for potential renters and buyers. Read More

Investments in real estate tech are on the upswing in the wake of some billion dollar exits this year.
Following Zillow’s acquisition of Trulia for $3.5 billion in July and News Corp’s $950 million purchase of Realtor.com-parent Move Inc. in September, venture investors are more eager than ever to get in on the market, putting up nearly $300 million in over 30 venture deals for… Read More

The Internet has disintermediated almost every business that used to rely on brokers — except for the real estate industry. There, we still pay huge fees to agents who often do very little for their money and aren’t necessarily on our side. Allre, which is launching at TechCrunch Disrupt SF 2014 today, wants to bring the real estate business into the 21st century by giving buyers… Read More

Apartment listing startup Zumper has spent the last several years building apps to help connect brokers and property managers with prospective tenants and vice versa. Today it’s launching a new application called Zapp that will simplify the process of not just finding, but also applying for, their next apartment. Read More

Hightower, a “command center for commercial real estate,” today announced that it has raised a $6.5 million Series A round led by its existing investors Bessemer Venture Partners and Thrive Capital. Previous investors RRE Ventures, Red Swan Ventures, David Tisch, Lee Linden and Brandon Shorenstein also participated in this round, which comes just eight months after the… Read More

One of the annoyances of online real estate search is that you often see the exact same house pop up day after day, even though it is a run-down shack (“rustic with good bones”) in a not so nice (“up and coming”) neighborhood with a concrete yard (“low maintenance”). Estately wants to free you from that and it’s appropriating Tinder’s swipe… Read More

Real estate is a business where tech is only slowly starting to make a dent into the traditional way of doing things. But even the most technophobic agent now knows that an online presence besides just being listed in an MLS is a necessity. Everdwell wants to give those agents — many of whom aren’t all that tech savvy — an easy way to create an online home for their… Read More

Unless you are buying a house in cash, you pretty much have to have a mortgage pre-approval letter from your bank before you even start house hunting. That’s typically something you would go to the bank for, but a number of mortgage services now also allow you to go through this process online. Online real estate site Zillow has long offered mortgage comparison services and a… Read More

Real estate marketplace Zillow reported its Q2 2014 financial results today. The company reported revenue of $78.7 million — up 68% over the second quarter of 2013 — but a non-GAAP net loss per share of $0.05. GAPP net loss was about $10.5 million compared to $10.2 million in Q2 2013. The Wall Street consensus was that it would post revenue of about $76.52 million and a loss per… Read More

Zillow is going to acquire Trulia in a deal worth $3.5 billion in stock, according to the company. The combination of these two real estate tech companies should secure Zillow’s position as a market leader in the U.S., with Trulia CEO Pete Flint staying on in his role but reporting to Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff. Flint and one other board member from Trulia will join the new combined board… Read More